The big news from AASP in February 2015 is the development of the new AASP website at www.asiansocialpsych.org. For years, we have had trouble with membership, because it has been managed through the publisher of Asian Journal of Social Psychology (AJSP). Starting in February, 2015, AASP will be able to handle membership directly, online through our new website. This is a Flightdec.com website that is being purpose built by FRESCO Thinking and Communications. It will have the functionality not only to handle membership (including payment of membership fees), but will have a secure area, where

  1. Members will be able to access AJSP and the Jour-nal of Pacific Rim Psychology (JPRP), for free.
  2. Members will have their own home pages, where they may broadcast their latest news, book chapters, and articles, and receive news and papers from other members
  3. Private chatrooms, where members may discuss research or other collegial activities and have a re-cord of the outcomes of their discussions.

There will be the option for online only membership, that is cheaper than current membership fees. Of course, members may still elect to pay a bit extra to have AJSP delivered to them in print form.

The other major function of the new website is that it will be purpose built to be able to be customized to manage future conferences.

We will trial this partially in 2015 (as manuscript submission has already been handled by the local organizing committee website in the Philippines). But the real value of the system will be shown in 2017 and future years, where the local organizing committee will not have to invest in their own website to manage their conference, but can easily adapt the Flightdec.com platform to suit their needs.

We anticipate a sharp membership growth because of this. In the past, our membership has grown with each conference, and then fallen off rapidly afterward.